The unusual site banners are to bring attention to the fact that Labour activists in Bexley are manipulating Facebook Groups with fictional posters. They deny it, threaten police action for ‘harassing’ a fictitious character and then demonstrate their willingness to impersonate by creating a false Administrator account in my name. The banner on display is chosen randomly from a selection of three, with a fourth bearing the familiar Bexley Council is Bonkers logo.
24 May - The count or the fix?
I suspect I could have wangled an invitation to the recent election count
because I knew at least five of the candidates quite well but I am not good at
late nights and feared I might fall asleep. I also had to be up and out early
next morning and actually drove past the Crook Log counting centre at 5:30 a.m.
and saw its car park full right up.
I had made arrangements to be updated by some of the candidates but these
were slow to arrive. I guessed that there were several recounts
on-going.
What I heard about the recount in Blackfen & Lamorbey was concerning but I am
not sure exactly how the final result was decided so we had best leave that. However in Slade Green and Northend several reports were all saying the same thing.
There was a tie for second place between the Labour and Reform candidate, There
was a recount with the same result and a second recount on the Thursday night
and after three tied counts the Reform people would have been happy
with drawing the winner’s name from a hat. But Labour was not happy with that as
there was a 50-50 chance they would lose their opposition status.
With what some would see as the connivance of the Returning Officer, staff were
reconvened at considerable cost to the taxpayer for a Friday evening shift but the
third Recount (four counts!) produced the same result.
The decision was not a hat pull but to go back through spoiled votes to see if
they could find one that would swing the result in Labour’s favour and they
found just one, after which no more spoiled papers were checked. Surely in all
fairness they should have been?
The selected spoiled paper which had been agreed as spoilt by all parties on the
Thursday evening had three Xs in a ward where only two Councillors were up for election.
There was an X against both the Labour candidates’ names and one for the Green
candidate too. However both Labour names had been vigorously scrubbed out, one
more so than the other, leaving a single X for the Green. No surprise it was
rejected; by the Green candidate too.
Nearly 24 hours after its rejection it was deemed to be a vote for Labour.
Why the candidate that would swing the result and not the other one? i.e. The Labour Leader. The Reform
candidates were excluded from the decision.
It was the most important vote in Bexley, It saw the Labour Group with eight
Councillors and Reform with seven. It could so easily have been the other way around.
Not only were the two Labour candidates present
late on the Friday but so was the Labour MP. Why?
Because an MP can put a Returning Officer under pressure and upsetting the local
MP might have consequences; and there is money at
stake. The Leader of the opposition is given a very generous ‘salary’.
There are allegations of aggression at various levels and Reform
candidates have complained they were were kept well away from the decision making
whilst Labour was not.
Politics in Bexley is a very dirty game, Trust none of them.